Cowboys, Indians, and Conflict: The Pinhook Draw Fight, 1881 By RUSTY SALMON and ROBERT S. MCPHERSON
T
he La Sal Mountains sit astride the Utah—Colorado border, dominating the skyline over the canyons and mesas of southeastern Utah. For thousands of years these mountains have been important in diverse ways to the changing peoples of the region. In the late 1800s, as a dramatic change in regional human occupation was solidifying, the La Sals became the site of an incident that symbolizes the shifting of power from one group to another. Here, on the northwest slope of the range, a group of Utes/Paiutes and Anglo cowboys engaged in a gunfight. The skirmish, fought in what is today called Pinhook Draw, was a bloody consequence of the struggle of two groups to maintain incompatible lifestyles on the same land. Noted for their natural resources in an often-stingy land, the La Sals have long offered water, minerals, vegetation, and animal life to those who have c o m e to e x p l o i t t h e i r w e a l t h . T h e La Sal Mountains, seen from Paleoindian and Archaic peoples were the present.dayArches National first to avail themselves of these resources, Park. Pinhook Draw, site of a hunting and gathering in climatic conditions that often differed from those of today. The gunfight between Utes and Anasazi, the next prehistoric peoples, hunted cowboys, is located on the and farmed on the slopes of the mountains northwest slope of the range.
Rusty Salmon, a retired medical researcher, now uses her investigative skills to address questions surrounding historical events. She lives less than three miles from this battle site. Robert S. McPherson is on the Advisory Board of the Utah Historical Quarterly and teaches at the College of Eastern Utah-San Juan Campus.